


Paper Confetti

by torigates



Category: Bones (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-11
Updated: 2013-11-11
Packaged: 2018-01-01 03:45:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1039971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/torigates/pseuds/torigates
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s unsurprising then, that she marks a lot of her life by kisses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paper Confetti

  
Angela is good with numbers.

(She remembers the first time she brought home a perfect score on a math test, her dad just looked at her for a long time in that way of his, eyes hard to read even when the sunglasses weren’t on, before nodding his head once, sharp. Then he held out his arms and twirled Angie around and said, “I’ll be damned.”)

Angela is good with numbers, making her good with computers and programs and art. She is not good with dates; rather, she likes to remember her life by events. The year she broke her arm, the year she went skydiving, the year she had her first kiss, the year she had her first girlfriend. The year she met Brennan (coincidentally, the year she met Hodgins and everything changed even before she knew that it had).

It’s unsurprising then, that she marks a lot of her life by kisses. Angela _loves_ kissing. She’s done a lot of it in her time, but the good ones? The good ones changed her life.

Growing up, Angela would have told anyone who asked that she was never going to get married. With a rock star dad and a distant at best mom, she just never thought the whole _institute of marriage_ would be for her (now, of course, she has to groan at how Brennan-like her former self sounds, but unlike Brennan, Angela has _always_ believed in love. It was just marriage she had problems with).

But when it’s all said and done, it’s really unsurprising that Angela’s had three weddings (actually—don’t quote her on that—she’s quite sure she’s had three weddings, but there _was_ that time in Argentina; she can’t really remember and the time with Danny Baxter when she was seven). She never could make up her mind about anything, and when she said she wasn’t going to do something, she just as often as not did.

The wedding with Grayson (what Angela can remember, anyway) was all heat and sand and the strong aroma of flowers. It was everything always imagined her wedding would be, on the rare occasions she allowed herself to daydream about getting married someday. Even after, when she couldn’t believe it was real and legal, part of her thought, _ah, it fits_.

By then she loved Hodgins. She didn’t want that wedding, that marriage, that life. She wanted curly hair, conspiracy theories, bugs, dirt and slime. She wanted Hodgins. Still, sometimes, if she’s being honest, she thinks about that wedding—that kiss, and the bells. Not regretfully—no. Wistfully, maybe, of a life she could have led, but didn’t.

The truth is, the two men are so intertwined in Angela’s mind. She couldn’t stay married to Grayson because she loved Hodgins, and she couldn’t marry Hodgins because she was married to Grayson. It’s all very confusing, really, and Angela, she loves with her whole heart. She loves Grayson for the life he could have offered to her, the life that almost was, but wasn’t. And Hodgins, well Angela doesn’t need a reason to love him, just like she doesn’t need a reason to breathe, or a reason to paint, or smile or love. She loves Hodgins because it’s what she does, and it’s not that she doesn’t have a choice in the matter, because she does. She loves Hodgins because she can, and because of swings.

She loves Hodgins, but she never thought that she would end up married to him. That year Hodgins asked her to marry him (the first time) was lovely (and that’s how it appears to Angela: _lovely_ ). Fully of smiles and happiness and love and stolen kisses (though she’s quite sure Cam knew where they were sneaking off to all those times. She never asks and Cam never says anything, but Angela has the sneaking suspicion that Cam knows everything that happens in the lab. That and she was probably just relieved the two of them weren’t making out right on the platform. Of course, they were guilty of that a time or two, but that was another story).

Angela remembers that proposal fondly, despite its outcome. Even she’s not sure why she said no, because everything in her said _yesyesyes_ , and Angela wasn’t usually one to ignore her desires, but it was also wrong, all wrong, and she didn’t know why. Angela knew enough of herself to trust that _no_ instinct, even while the look on Jack’s face broke her heart, and when she told him she hoped he’d ask again, she never meant anything more in her life before or since.

That wedding, that big, public wedding was not what Angela wanted. It was what she wanted, but it wasn’t right. It wasn’t her. It wasn’t _them_. That night, after they ran out of the church, and Angela’s dress was discarded on the floor along with her shoes and Jack’s jacket and tie, her hair pulled out from its careful pins, she felt relieved. She felt sad and she felt relieved, and she felt so much she wanted to open her chest and pour it onto a canvass so maybe then she could explain what she meant and why she put them both through the whole ordeal. Jack put his hands on her face and kissed her and kissed her and kissed her and said _I love you. I want to be with you forever_ Angela thought that would be enough.

It wasn’t, but at the time she thinks they both believed it, and that’s good enough for her.

For a long time after that, Angela thought she was done with weddings.

One day, Hodgins said, _You don’t look good today. Your smile is ordinary at best,_ and everything just _clicked_. It wasn’t about weddings, or marriage, or anything else she was hung up on before, because this was it with them. It was the real deal.

That kiss in the courthouse jail changed everything. It said, _I’m your guy_ and _I don’t need to know your name, you are so much more to me than that_ , and so many other things that Angela was afraid to let herself think and feel and say. Paper confetti rained down around them and Jack’s kiss said more than _I want to be with you forever_ , it said _I won’t be without you again_ , and that was enough.

That was all Angela ever needed to know.


End file.
